The government will do everything required to popularise the cultivation of millets and provide marketing support to different food items made of millets, apart from leveraging the benefits extended by the Centre under the National Food Security Mission (NFSM), said Telangana Agriculture Minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy.
Inaugurating the three-day ‘Millet Fest-2015’ at People’s Plaza on Necklace Road here on Friday, he said that under the NFSM, six districts, Medak , Mahbubnagar, Warangal, Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Adilabad, that had 70 per cent of the total area under millets in the State, were chosen for 100 per cent funding.
The allocation approved by Government of India for 2014-15 was Rs.7.14 crore, he said, urging farmers to take advantage of the same.
Large number of stalls
The Millet Fest-2015 had about 60 stalls put up by different departments/organisations under the broad umbrella of the Prof. Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU), displaying seed technologies and food products made of proso, foxtail, finger, little, pearl millet and jowar.
They were packed in such a manner that they cannot be considered any less than the products made by private companies and stacked in supermarket shelves.
Mr. Pocharam Srinivas Reddy spent a lot of time at the festival taking keen interest in the stalls.
He told several people that the reason he still felt fit at his age was because of the millet foods he had consumed during childhood and in his teens.
He was accompanied by Principal Secretary of Agriculture, Poonam Malakondaiah, Commissioner of Agriculture Priyadarshini and a host of officials representing the PJTSAU, including Special Officer V. Praveen Rao, Dean of Home Science Anurag Chaturvedi and Directors D. Raji Reddy (Research) and G. Bhupal Raju (Extension).
